Aloud
by absolutelycancerous
Summary: Tonight's just one of the bad nights.


This is the fourth time he's jolted awake tonight, and it still, apparently, isn't even late enough for _Maka_ to be asleep yet.

She's sitting up against the pillows, the light on his desk flicked on so she can read the book currently in her lap. Every time he's woken up (any time he wakes up in general while she's reading) she asked if the light as bothering him, because she could go to bed! But he shook his head, and attempted to get back to sleep.

Tonight's just one of the bad nights.

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, sighing as he wiggles onto his back; no sense being on his side if all he's going to do is wake up and jolt around. Maka notices this, and although he can't see her with his hands over his face, he knows she's looking at him with that sad little look that always crosses her when the bad nights happen, the one that lets him know she's willing to do whatever he asks, because she just wants him to rest and sleep easy, to _help_ him, if he'll let her.

"Feel okay?" She'd like to pretend he's just got a fever or something of the sort, but that's a humorless joke, and one that is not spoken out loud anymore.

He doesn't answer with words, just a grunt as he rolls over to curl around her sitting form, tucking his face into the nook of her elbow; her skin's so soft. She sets her book down for a moment to pet his hair, and Soul quickly taps the book on the thighs.

She knows. She smiles and picks it back up.

"What is this?"

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

"_Again_? You read that not _even_ a few weeks ago!"

Maka blushes, shrugs shyly as she holds the book a little defensively in her small fingers, to protect it from his harsh words. "It's one of my favorites; I like Huck."

"Huck's a little shit," Soul drawls, lifting up her arm to instead nuzzle his face into her belly to get more comfortable. Her arm wraps around his shoulders as she props the book up against the tops of her thighs, up enough so she can read and he can see the words, too.

"He's an innocent realist who's stuck in a disgustingly romantic and hypocritical world, Soul," she explains. Maka relates to Huckleberry, personally; she finds his innocence a sort of common ground, and his unbelievable realistic insight painfully akin to her own characteristics.

Soul just makes himself comfy, though, not _completely_ turned off to the idea solely because of her choice of literature, and waits for her to find a place to start (he caught her in the middle of a chapter). She thumbs back to the beginning of the chapter, and Soul is kind of glad it's only a single-digit number—she must have just started this one.

And then she reads aloud, voice like wind chimes in a soft summer breeze, as she tells him about Huck's resistance to joining in civilized life and the fear that drops his gut when his superstition strikes him still. Soul doesn't like books for the effort of reading, not because he's never liked the stories—but he's such a slow reader, he might as well be reading ten words a minute, something that doesn't get much story-telling done, nor is it very entertaining.

But Maka reads fluidly, not too painfully slow, but she reads fluently enough for the words to make sense; she sounds a bit funny speaking the dialect the book is written in, but Soul enjoys the fact she can make it seem to make sense. It also makes him smile at the face reading is such a natural thing to her, like breathing or writing.

Maka reads and reads, reads until she forgets she's reading out loud to him, until her own eyes start to wander and when she looks up, it's nearly midnight. She looks to the mess of white hair and jagged teeth at her belly, smiles in warm relief when she sees that he's definitely asleep, eyebrows set in a more casual stage and his hands open loose where they rest, curled up towards his chest. She pets his hair back, lets her hand linger on his neck just to feel the flicker of life that pulses there, the liquid fire that keeps the spark in his eyes. She says a silent prayer, the one about dying before you wake, though she prays it's _his_ soul that whatever being up above them (she's not a very religious girl) will take.

She sets her book aside and flicks off the lamp, gently moving Soul from his cozy place against her tummy so she can lay down under the covers with him. He doesn't move after she maneuvers him, just snores a little, and when she's comfortable, she brings him back towards her, wrapping her arms around him gently, to ward off his nightmares throughout the rest of night.

Unfortunately, he wakes up again later, jolting his head back and effectively smashing into her nose with a sickening "crack!" Between her (denied) crying and his rampant apologies, Soul gets her to the bathroom, and sits with her out of remorse while she holds her head forward and holds a wet washcloth to her face and waits for the bleeding to cease.


End file.
